Looks like we'll be trapped for a while
by aheartmadefullmetal16
Summary: In response to another anon prompt from tumblr. Riza and Maes are overseeing an Ishvalan prisoner exchange. It's a routine deal, and nothing could possibly go wrong. Right? Set pre-canon during the Ishval war.


_**A/N:** This was in response to another anon prompt from tumblr. It's from the same conversation starter as "Teach me how to play"._

* * *

Hot, relentless sunlight beat down upon Riza's and Hughes' head, gluing their hair to their sweat-slicked scalps. The sand beneath their bodies was just as bad, scalding whatever exposed skin they had and sticking in every crease of their bodies. The Ishvalan desert was unyielding and harsh, and today Riza and Hughes were stuck right in the middle of it.

Next to her, Hughes shifted uncomfortably. She didn't blame him; the sand particles felt like a thousand tiny, hot stingers, and having them lodge into her clothes was by no means desirable. Her arms twinged slightly from holding the same position for so long. She was stretched out on the desert sand, her body frozen in a prone form fit for her rifle. Through her scope, she carefully observed a prisoner negotiation taking place in the valley below them. Major Smith was heading the operation; he was a rough man with a tendency to let his belligerent side get in the way of a peaceful conversation. Riza didn't know how Smith had gotten chosen for this mission, but as she was still a cadet, she couldn't do anything about it.

"I swear, if Smith messes this up, I'm gonna see to it personally that he's on probation for a week," Hughes grumbled, rubbing the lenses of his glasses against his white coat. "When he loses his temper he's about as peaceful as starved lion." Riza quirked an eyebrow, amused. Ever since Roy had introduced her to Hughes a couple of days before, she had been surprised at the way he managed to open up to her so quickly. How he managed to keep an optimistic outlook on things, she had no idea. Riza wasn't a pessimist, but optimism didn't exactly come easily to her. She was grateful for Hughes' humor in a such a dreadful place as this. She gave a hum of assent to his statement and refocused on the interaction below.

Down amongst the ruins, the Ishvalan representatives had finally arrived, their Amestrian prisoners bound. The Ishvalan prisoners held by Smith's men were much more strictly held- they were bound in cuffs, blindfolded, and gagged with dirty rags. Not for the first time, Riza was disappointed in the way that the prisoners were treated. She knew that if she shared her thoughts with anyone, she would be ridiculed, but her mind was made up nevertheless. She'd seen enough death in the past few weeks to last her a lifetime, and she didn't want those sights to repeat themselves.

As expected, Smith seemed to be getting angrier by the second. He was waving his arms around in wild gestures, his hand occasionally straying to the sword sheath on his waist. He was one of the few members of the military who still used swords, and Riza personally thought it was because he enjoyed taking the Ishvalans apart. She couldn't possibly understand how anyone could enjoy killing, especially in a way as gruesome as Smith did it. "We'd better get closer," Riza cautioned, and Hughes sighed in relief next to her.

"Good, I was about to say the same thing, Cadet. Plus, this sand is pretty much giving me third degree burns everywhere. Come on," Hughes instructed. He pushed himself up from the ground, wincing as the hot grains burned his palms. Riza did the same, switching on the safety to her rifle and slinging it over her shoulder. Together they walked farther down the dune, taking care to stay out of the Ishvalans' line of sight.

As they walked, a faint _sssshing_ permeated the silence, followed by a loud _boom_. Hughes growled in frustration, cursing under his breath and running to the edge of the dune. Riza followed and peered down at the scene. One of the Ishvalans, in hysterics and suddenly sporting a nasty gash across his face, was chucking grenades at Smith's rapidly retreating team. Smith had drawn his sword and slayed both of the Ishvalan prisoners, as well as the grenade-launcher's companions. Riza swore violently, much to Hughes' surprise, and started sprinting down the dune with him close behind. _This was supposed to be a routine prisoner exchange!_ she screamed mentally. _No one else was supposed to die!_

"Hawkeye! Wait!" Hughes yelled after her, his arms and legs wildly pinwheeling as he struggled to find purchase on the shifting sand. Had this been a different situation, Riza would have laughed; the sight of him flopping about like a scarecrow was pretty hilarious. But Riza was focused on only one thing: get to Smith and pound his ridiculous hot head into the ground.

As Riza rocketed down into the ruins, she noticed that a few of the dilapidated structures were falling down from the force of the Ishvalan's grenades, and carefully dodged each chunk of falling rock. She could see Smith far ahead, weaving through the crumbling ruins with his men and recently re-acquired prisoners, their hands no longer bound. She could hear Hughes' footsteps pounding close behind, and was glad. Through her determination she felt a sense of gratitude that he was running with her and not trying to stop her, like Roy would have done.

"This way!" she called, spying a shortcut through two buildings. _If I cut through here, Hughes and I will intercept them much faster. Then I can smack that useless idiot silly,_ she thought. Her rifle was banging relentlessly against her back, and she was amazed that she'd managed to keep it on her shoulder through her instinctive flight down the dunes.

"HAWKEYE, NO!"

Suddenly a deafening _boom_ sounded over her head, soon accompanied by the grating clamor of falling rock. Riza froze dead in her tracks, gazing up as a giant cloud of dust descended upon her. Then, something blunt hit her square on the head, and she slumped to her knees, the world going black.

* * *

Maes awoke blearily, and immediately started coughing. The dust from the explosion coated his lungs and throat, and stung his eyes. His glasses were crusted with gunk, and he sighed. _Curse these eyes,_ he thought, not for the first time and certainly not the last. He tried to scrub away the dust, but ultimately could not, succeeding only in bending the bridge of his glasses for what seemed like the thousandth time.

A spectacular pain erupted into life across his forehead, and he winced. He placed a burned palm against it, and was mildly shocked to find it covered in blood. _Wait! Hawkeye!_ In a panic, he looked around, and found Hawkeye miraculously mostly untouched, aside from the blood dripping from her temple and the fact that she was still out cold. _Roy's gonna kill me,_ Maes thought unhappily. He didn't know exactly what was between those two, but whatever bond they shared was certainly significant; after Cadet Hawkeye had saved both their skins only a few days before, Roy had screamed in frustration at her, insisting that she was too young and that she had no place on a battlefield. Maes knew that Roy's intentions towards Hawkeye were the absolute best, and driven only by his concern for her, but that also meant that Maes would mostly likely get reprimanded by his friend for allowing Hawkeye to get hurt.

He grabbed his thankfully-half-full water canteen from its hook on his belt, and focused first on cleaning Hawkeye up. _Head wounds bleed a lot more than other wounds, so I need to patch her up quick._ Ripping a few strips from his white coat, Maes poured some of his precious water on them, propped Hawkeye up, and mopped up the blood that was beginning to run down the cadet's face. The trails left a stain, but he couldn't worry about that now. He quickly bunched some cloth together, compressing her wound, and wound the rest of the strips around her head, securing the makeshift compress with a few well-tied knots. Satisfied with his work, Maes examined their surroundings.

It was only then that Maes realized just what luck they had had. The rocks had fallen exactly on either side of them, towering up at least thirty feet and proving impossible to climb. As he tilted his head up, stars blinked into life in his vision, and he got extremely woozy. _Oh, right,_ Maes thought dumbly, his head spinning. _I forgot to patch myself up. Silly me._ In a stupor he sat down, noticing dully that the blood was beginning to run into his eyes. Using the few remaining strips he had torn from his coat, he weakly scrubbed at his head, and bound it similarly to Hawkeye's. As soon as the wound was protected, Maes chugged what was left of his water and began to feel a little better.

A soft groan sounded to his left, and to his surprise, Hawkeye was sitting up. She pressed her hand to her temple, her face screwing up in pain and surprise. "What happened?" she asked blearily, running her hand across her face.

"The grenade guy must have tossed one close to here and caused the ruins to collapse," Maes explained. "You had a pretty nasty gash on your head, so I wrapped it up. We got pretty lucky, considering."

He watched as the cadet stared at her surroundings in disbelief. _I guess the universe was looking out for us,_ Maes concluded. He wasn't a religious man, but he did believe that there was _something_ controlling all the forces around them.

"Looks like we'll be trapped for a while," Maes said, rather unnecessarily. He hated unresolved conflicts; they didn't yet know what had happened to Smith and his team, or the grenade guy.

"Where's my rifle?" Hawkeye asked suddenly. She looked around, her gaze slightly unfocused. Maes helped her look, occasionally rooting through small piles of rock to find the telltale barrel or stock. He was extremely careful to not cause any rock falls; to do so would most certainly be like signing their own death certificates.

After a few minutes of getting his hands (and entire uniform, frankly) covered in dust, he finally found the barrel. "Aha!" he called triumphantly, pulling it from its hiding place. As he pulled, he stopped short; _only_ the barrel had appeared from beneath the rocks. "Uh… Hawkeye?" He turned around helplessly and presented the fragmented gun to her. Hawkeye sighed and swore under her breath, and Maes couldn't help but laugh.

"Sir, what's so funny?" The annoyance was more than evident in Hawkeye's voice, but Maes understood.

"I'm sorry, it's just that you've barely said anything this entire mission and half of it has been cursing," he explained, chuckling. "No offense, but I didn't really peg you as the type to be liberal with her words. You sound like a pissed-off drill sergeant."

"To be fair, so do you. But none taken," she said, taking what was left of her destroyed gun from him. "Today is not turning out how I expected it to at all."

"That goes for you and me both," Maes replied. He wasn't exactly surprised that Smith had gone off, but the murders he had committed were still jarring. Maes had been fighting for a few weeks now, but the sight of so much blood and so many corpses still haunted him. _I'm never going to get used to this,_ he lamented silently. When he had entered the military, he'd been bent on protecting Amestris with all the strength and willpower he had, but he hadn't quite anticipated the blood that would stain his hands, both literally and figuratively.

Hawkeye went silent, and Maes worried for a moment that she had fainted again. But no, she was merely deep in thought, mentally far away. He wondered why she always seemed to be so closed off and withdrawn. _Beats me how Roy got her to open up, even if he did study under her father for a few years._ The young cadet wasn't the type to blurt her feelings to the world, and Maes didn't blame her. In a world where every little weakness was able to be exploited and manipulated, Hawkeye was smart to safeguard her past.

"Cenz for your thoughts," Maes said quietly. She perked up, her eyes coming back into focus once more. "What's got you so pensive?"

Hawkeye considered this for a moment, most likely choosing her words carefully. "When I enlisted into the military, I did it because there is someone I need to protect. I just didn't think I'd be preventing so many others from doing just that for _their_ loved ones."

Maes' heart sank. He hadn't expected her inner thoughts to mirror his own so closely. "It's hard to hear this and believe it," Maes started slowly, "but you're still a good person. At least I think so anyway. I have to believe that for myself, too, or else this whole thing just may drive me insane." He paused. "Every day I see things that keep getting more and more terrible, and sometimes, those terrible things happen at my hands. I think the only thing keeping me from quitting right now is that I have people to protect, too." Maes' heart surged as he remembered Gracia, and he had to fight the urge to shove in Hawkeye's face the picture of Gracia he always carried. There were a lot of uncertainties about war, but he was certain about this- the second he got back to Central, he was going to ask Gracia to marry him. He had no doubt in his mind that Gracia was the one. The very thought of her made all these days in the hellish Ishvalan desert worth it. _I sure hope Hawkeye's got someone like that,_ Maes mused. He didn't doubt her hardiness or willingness to serve, but he wouldn't want her life to become so damaged at such a young age. She needed support and love from somewhere, and since he knew nothing about her family, he hoped she could find it.

"Cenz for your thoughts," Hawkeye echoed, a small smile beginning to show. Despite the grime on her face, her eyes were bright and focused once more.

Maes laughed. "I was just thinking, who have you got to support you? Who's this person you need to protect?"

Hawkeye stiffened, and Maes instantly knew he had pressed on an uncomfortable subject. "Don't worry about me, sir, I can handle myself." Her voice was harder, but not invasive.

He noted her careful avoidance of his second question, and decided not to ask about it further. "I'm sorry. I just know it's difficult to get through this without someone to back you up." He stopped for a moment, carefully crafting the words he was about to say. "If it ever gets to be too much, you're welcome to come to me. I'm all ears."

The young cadet looked surprised. "Thank you," she said slowly, her voice softer now. Maes nodded in acknowledgment.

After their brief conversation, the both of them fell into silence. Maes decided that he had bothered her enough, and settled back against the crumbling wall behind him. To his surprise, the wall gave a little. He turned around quickly, eyeing the fragile structure, willing it not to fall. Hawkeye watched him intently, a look of curiosity crossing her face. Holding his breath, Maes tested the wall once more. _Please let this be a way out,_ he hoped. After a few tense seconds, a chunk of the wall came away, just big enough to fit him. He could see sunlight filtering through the dust and splintered stone, and a door that could only lead to the outside. Maes whooped, then instantly clapped a hand over his mouth; who knows what it took for a mini-avalanche to happen around them. "Come on, Hawkeye! Let's get out of here," he called, and launched himself through the hole.

* * *

Once they were safely outside, Hawkeye and Maes dusted themselves off vigorously and instantly groaned at the intense heat beating down upon their heads once more. After searching briefly for any clues of Smith or his team, they decided to head back to base, trudging across the shifting ground.

Seeing as Hawkeye was now weaponless (her extra gun had jammed when the rocks fell), Maes lent her his spare gun, as well as a couple of his throwing knives. He didn't think that they would be ambushed out in the open, but he really didn't want to be carrying her back to base and consequently facing a freak-out from Roy. Out of respect and protection for her, he walked behind her a pace or two, watching her back. At first she had insisted that she follow due to her rank, but Maes' gallantry had won the argument.

As they walked, Maes studied the young cadet curiously. She walked with a surety in her step, all senses on high alert, occasionally swiveling her head side to side. Her gait was confident and yet completely silent, regardless of the unsteady ground. _It's remarkable how much she reminds me of Roy,_ Maes thought, amused. Then, a bombshell hit him. _Ahhhh. That's who she's protecting._ He allowed a giddy grin to stretch across his face. _I'm gonna tease him so badly for this when we get back._

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 _ **A/N:** Leave a review! :)_


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